Employment

Recap: Follow Me from HTML Illiterate to Professional Programmer

In case you haven’t read Week 0 (about my preparation), I am currently a student at a programming bootcamp called Coding House in the San Francisco Bay Area. I finished college a few months ago, but decided my business degree wasn’t going to let me do what I really wanted: to build rather than manage. This realization and my love for startups (and California) led me to begin working toward a career in software development.

3 Highs: Practice means Progress!

Learning Made Easy: Okay, this is kind of misleading – learning to code without any background in programming is not in any way easy. Getting used to the daily regimen and long hours, however, makes it easier to focus and learn for longer hours without zoning out. The constant feeling of never being able to completely catch up is inherent to a boot camp, but it has been a whole lot easier to work with since I’ve physically fallen (more) in sync with the schedule.

Seeing Results: It is also been extremely helpful to set mini goals. Everyone learns in different ways and at different paces, which becomes very important to keep in mind in such an intensive learning environment. Recently, I’ve been taking what the instructor is teaching as a relative syllabus rather than forcing myself to try to learn things at his pace. It helps to note down the topics and terms that are mentioned during lectures and then spending the evenings re-learning them on my own at my own pace by setting personal mini goals(sometimes even allowing some material to spill over to the next few days). I’ve actually been able to retain and successfully use more information this way over the past week.

Building Stuff! Considering the fact that I’ve only been here at Coding House for 2 weeks and only looked into programming for a few weeks before that, I am no expert any any language quite yet. During my HTML/CSS preparation before coming here, though, what I did learn was a result of using the tools to actually build a website. In the few bouts of free time I have (often giving up social interaction for it), I’ve taken on a few side projects to help me pick up more material in a short span of time. For example, I’m currently working on creating a simple single-page website for an international charity I’ve been involved with for a few years. The site itself is very small, but I’ve been trying to include some interesting features and plug-ins to get some practice in with front end development. It can be tiring at times to spend even my free time working, but seeing what I’ve learned in such a short amount of time turn into a viable product has been absolutely worth it. Not only does it serve as encouragement, but I can also add these things to my currently sparse development portfolio.

3 Lows: The Case of the Missing Time Turner

The Command Line: Using the command line has been…frustrating to say the least. The command line is an interface that allows users to literally command everything on the computer from a single window. For someone who has never used it before, though, it looks like a load of Gibberish. Don’t get me wrong – the command line is a powerful and useful tool once you learn how to use it properly. The issue is the ‘learning to use it’ part, though. The tool literally requires its own language which simply calls for a whole lot of memorization and understanding of hierarchies. It hasn’t necessarily been difficult to learn, just extraordinarily time consuming. I’m looking forward to becoming capable of using it quickly, though – it makes it a lot easier to search through files and organize.

The Never-Ending To-Do List: Like I mentioned above, the feeling of never being able to catch up is inherent to a bootcamp. The entire point is to glean huge amounts of information in a short amount of time. Making mini goals has certainly helped organize things for me, but the list of said goals seems to get longer faster than I can check items off. Its like that dream where you are running toward something and can never seem to get there – except less creepy and unfortunate. The Never-Ending To-Do list is less characteristic of a programming bootcamp and more a usual component of life in the real world. Preparation is key!

Lack of Time Turner: No, seriously. I would pay a whole lot of money for Hermione’s time turner right about now. I’m here for 60 days and have made every effort to spend as much of my time as possible learning, but there still isn’t enough to do everything I want to while I still have access to the teachers and resources that make the learning process so much easier.

The Immersion: Kudos for Kung Pao

Camping: We capped this week off with a camping trip to the Redwoods as a team bonding event. We played Airsoft and other games, which were a lot of fun. Then it got dark. And cold. And I needed a toilet (which – surprise! – didn’t exist). And lets just say I’m a city girl. Being so out of my element was a good experience, though. Learning to deal with discomfort is a pretty solid life skill.

Dining with Developers:Sarah (our Food Service Director) put together some pretty awesome meals that definitely provided some bright spots whenever I got stuck debugging! I’ve been extremely homesick for my mom’s home-cooked Indian meals lately, so seeing Indian stews and spices popping up has been amazing. Plus, we had some awesome Kung Pao chicken this week. Not having to worry about cooking and groceries is a huge plus when there’s so little time to learn so much – kudos to Sarah for making life a bit easier at Coding House!

Stockholm Syndrome: Usually, I’m the kind of person who gets extremely irritated if I don’t get to leave the house and have a change of scenery at all for a full day. I’ve been going days without setting foot outside here, though, and the kick is that I don’t mind that at all. I definitely could take breaks and go out for a bit if I wanted to, but I’ve been more interested in figuring the next problem out or designing my next project so it hasn’t bothered me at all. Stockholm syndrome setting in?

Takeaway Advice

Don’t beat yourself up over falling behind the instructor’s pace. Instead, create your own mini goals and work toward fulfilling them on your own time.

Build something! The fastest way to learn something is to throw yourself into the deep end and make it work. Programming is no different.

Learning programming skills has become commonplace and, in many cases, necessary for certain jobs. Responding to this demand, efforts to teach a beginner to code have been popping up in different forms all over the world. From free online tutorials to expensive boot camps cost up to $20,000, there are a myriad of options to choose from. One of the most popular such endeavors is a website called Team Treehouse that offers high-quality tutorials and workspaces for an affordable price (starting from $25/month). If rave reviews about Treehouse’s Front-End Web Development track and teaching style aren’t enough, you can even try the platform for free for 2 weeks before deciding whether it is the right place to invest your $25. Considering the average web developer in the United States makes $81,670 and the industry is predicted to grow by at least 20% in the coming years, the investment is probably more than worth it. If you aren’t convinced yet to give Treehouse a try, check out these awesome features:

Tracks

There are 8 available tracks on Treehouse: Web Design, Front-End Web Development, Rails Development, iOS Development, Android Development, PHP Development, WordPress Development, and Starting a Business. Each track teaches units of information including languages (like HTML5, CSS, JavaScript, Ajax, Ruby, etc.) and allows you to work through examples as you watch the tutorials. Treehouse Co-Founder Ryan Carson’s favorite feature within the Tracks is the Scheduler.

“Once you pick a Track, you can choose how long you’d like to take to complete the Track. We then calculate how much time you should spend on Treehouse every day and then help keep you on schedule”

Workspaces

As you follow along with the videos, you can also code along in a workspaces window that allows you to preview your work at any time. There is no downloading or desktop work necessary.

Forever Expanding Library

One of the best things about Treehouse is their ever-expanding library of tutorials. Even if you get through all of the tracks, there is always new content being added to its library that you can use to improve your development skills whether you are a novice or expert. Just in the past few weeks, they have come out with several new tutorials, from Git Workshops to Android Animations. Its candyland for an autodidact!

Forums and the Gamification of Learning

Many online learning platforms employ the use of gamification as an incentive to continue to learn, and Treehouse is no exception. Users earn points and badges that lead to reward videos that tell fun stories and are great mini-breaks before getting started on the next track. Another one of Ryan’s favorite features falls into this category:

“…getting your answer marked as “Best answer” in the Forum. You get extra points!”

The forums not only provide a space for students to interact as they learn and help solve each other’s issues, they also play into the gamification aspect of Treehouse to inspire users to remain active. So after reading about all these great, ever-growing features, are you reading to become an awesome developer? Sign up for your free trial here!

“With Treehouse and a little imagination, you can go anywhere…” – Author Unknown

It isn’t the ability to code like a champ or your beastly social media savvy (although those are increasingly attractive attributes for many positions) – what employers really want from you is ‘teachability’. They want to be able to teach you how to do the job their way quickly and efficiently. To accomplish this, you will need to prove to them your ability to learn things very quickly.

Were you praised for picking things up quickly, ever since you were a child? Great! Now do better! There’s always room for improvement and little more satisfying than being able to tell your boss that you finished the job perfectly- and in a fraction of the allotted time. It would be great to be able to train yourself to become a more efficient learner so you can pick things up faster on the job, but learning velocity is largely inherent. Luckily, the trick here isn’t to increase your learning ability. Instead, the focus should be on preparation.

If you need to write business plans as a part of your job, for example, you should learn how to write a standard business plan on your own first and spend office hours recognizing your company’s unique twist instead of spending extra time to learn from step one all over again. . Now the job is easier and will get done faster – and you can show off to your supervisor how quickly you picked up their way of doing things.

You are your own Yoda.

It’s true – you know yourself better than anyone else. Why not take advantage of this fact and teach yourself a thing or two about the skills you know you will need for your job? If you arm your mind with the basics, picking up your company’s twist on things will be easier (and quicker!).

You can learn awesome stuff from all over the internet now – from tutorials on Lydia or YouTube to full blown free Ivy League classes from Coursera, teaching yourself is the thing to do!

The first step is to narrow down the skills you should master for your industry. A visual designer, for example, might benefit from learning HTML basics while a marketer could take their work to the next level by building solid creative writing and copywriting skills.

Figuring out what exactly you need to learn is the hard part – now, you can just Google it and decide which resource (tutorial, class, article, e-book) you like best and get started!

Be the Tortoise.

Remember that story about the tortoise and hare where the hare gets really arrogant and ends up losing a race to the tortoise? It actually applies to your career progression really well. The worst thing you can do is to come off as being full of yourself to your co-workers or boss. Not only does that essentially flash a bright neon sign saying ‘Not Willing to Learn’ above your head, it also sets you up for a whole lot of lost opportunities.

Learning can come in the form of actively seeking knowledge by studying or taking a class, but it can also happen simply on the job if a good mentor takes a liking to you. A mentor at work can provide important insight, fast-tracking tips, and invaluable feedback – but no potential mentor is going to take interest in the new kid who thinks she knows everything. Remember to project the humble student within!

Be Proactive.

Being able to pick things up quickly, having great tech skills, and busting through assignments are obviously amazing achievements to have under your belt – but keep in mind that everyone on your team will try to display these things. Going out of your way to add value even when you weren’t specifically instructed to do so shows that you care about the team’s performance as a whole, not just your own. If you are a copywriter at a startup and you know about an upcoming feature-release or company re-branding, offer up your ideas right away and even provide samples to show that you’ve really thought about it.

Of course, it is always important to keep in mind that your ideas are suggestions that your supervisors can choose not to take and you shouldn’t overload them either. Imposing on someone else’s pet project can become annoying, even though you’re really just trying to help. Just remember, be humble and realize that you are the student. Soak up the experience of your co-workers and throw in some of your own fresher ideas without overdoing it. You will have impressed your boss before you know it!

Welcome to another week of Buzzwords Decoded with Accredible! Last week we cleared up the ruckus around ‘dynamic’ and are back again with ‘synergy’ to take your resume up another notch.

Definition: Merriam-Webster Dictionary

1: synergism; broadly : combined action or operation

2: a mutually advantageous conjunction or compatibility of distinct business participants or elements (as resources or efforts)

How to Use it Incorrectly

Synergy is pretty much what happens when two things are combined to make something better – at least that’s what its supposed to mean. The ‘synergy’ of ‘your leadership with your innovative team’s dynamic skills’ bringing about a positive change on your project is just a long and annoying way to say that you led a solid team to achieve an awesome outcome – which can be shortened to you being a good leader. Period.

Whenever a word is unnecessary, it is being used incorrectly. More often than not, ‘synergy’ can be replaced with ‘teamwork’ or ‘together’ which are words that are heard more often in conversation and are therefore easier for the brain to process and move on from. Throwing ‘synergy’ on your resume for the sake of showing off your beautiful corporate jargon will bring about a few sniggers and the trash pile.

How to Use it Properly

Just don’t. ‘Synergy’ could still belong in a high-level corporate meeting when discussing a merger or acquisition, but there are very few ways it could work on your resume. If you are trying to talk about the synergy of your dedication to maintaining a certain profit and passion for green initiatives, just use ‘and’. If you want to mention leading a synergy of two teams within your company, just use ‘collaboration’.

Synergy is not a word used in everyday conversation, so it will likely force a recruiter to pause on your resume, think about the word, and then move on after wasting precious time necessarily. Any reader should be able to glide through your resume as though they are reading a story. Words or phrases that make them stop and think about the term instead of the accomplishment its describing is useless.

Take Away

Don’t use ‘synergy’ unless you have a really, really good reason for it. It will either get snickered at or ignored – neither of which are desirable reactions to your resume!

Do you have a resume cliche you’d like to see addressed in this series? Leave a comment below with your word and the Accredibles will decode your cliche as quickly as possible!

You’re looking at the job listing for your ideal gig just a little while after graduation and feel the excitement mounting inside of you with every requirement you know you can fulfill. Then you see that you need 2 years of work experience – which you don’t have as a new grad. Ugh. Do you pull back and look for a position that you don’t want as much? Do you resign yourself to a job you know will bore you for the next couple of years?

No. Stop and think like a hiring manager. They are looking for candidates who know their stuff. It just so happens that the general consensus says knowing your stuff requires some experience in the industry. This study by McKinsey & Co. and Chegg even says that college graduates are under prepared but overqualified for employment…a finding that will naturally push hiring managers away from hiring recent grads.

So clearly, your next step should be to prove that you are sufficiently prepared for employment. How? Build a portfolio of work similar to what you would be doing on the job and submit it with your job application. Refocus the potential employer’s attention on your skills and potential and away from metrics that don’t necessarily describe what you can do properly. Here’s how.

Step 1 – MOOCs: Learning the Skills

Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) are classes from well known Universities that professors modify for distance learning to allow access to any student for free. Many of these courses teach exactly the same material as what the professors teach in their traditional classes, but you can take them in your spare time without spending money to build your knowledge and skills base.

Keep in mind that your major and college classes are not the full span of your capabilities. An English degree is a great base for a copywriting career, but taking a few classes on your own time in marketing techniques can give your writing the boost you need to land that job at an ad agency.

Websites like Coursera and EdX provide great platforms for MOOCs. It is important, however, to record your work for the class. The assignments and projects you complete are great additions to your professional portfolio, as they legitimize the coursework you do through MOOCs. You can keep track of all this by downloading your work as you complete it, or by using websites like Accredible to transfer all of your online coursework to one place that can be linked to the rest of your portfolio.

Step 2 – Speculative Projects/Case Studies: Applying the Skills

There are case studies all over the internet – taking a few and using skills you learned from college and your MOOCs to write an analysis for each can help get your feet wet in the kind of thinking you need to solve problems in your industry.

Speculative or freelancing projects are also great ways to simulate what you will be doing later in a full time job. Telling a small or mid-sized business or nonprofit organization that you are willing to help them out for free or little charge is an easy way to land some of these projects – this is time you are spending building work experience regardless of the amount you are getting paid.

Specifically working with nonprofit organizations in a volunteer position not only gives you the added experience for your newly developed skills, it also shows a more human side of your personality. Maybe your volunteer work for Habitat for Humanity relates to your passion for fighting poverty, or perhaps your commitment to proper healthcare is showcased through your extensive work with the Red Cross. Talking about your volunteer work in an interview is also great way to transition to you personal qualities and cultural fit.

Step 3 – Research: Effectively Showcasing the Skills

Know what’s going on! Read the news, find new articles on techniques and technology, and learn to use the newest software. Once your profile gets you to an interview, you still need to prove that you can hit the ground running upon receiving an offer.

Having background knowledge about developments the company and its industry can help you come up with possible solutions to their problems before you are even working there – there is no better way than that to show that you would be an asset to the team.

Follow those three steps and you can show the hiring manager that you are perfect for your dream job because even though you don’t have years under your belt, you have the necessary skills and can demonstrate initiative to continue building more in the future.

Welcome to another week of Buzzwords Decoded with Accredible! Last week we cleared up the ruckus around ‘motivation’ and are back again with ‘dynamic’ to take your resume up another notch.

Definition: Merriam-Webster Dictionary

: always active or changing

: having or showing a lot of energy

: of or relating to energy, motion, or physical force

How to Use it Incorrectly

Saying that you are a dynamic person can mean a lot of different things in a lot of different contexts. Usually, ‘dynamic’ refers to something that changes. In the workplace, that may not necessarily be a good thing. Flexibility? Yes. Employee who randomly decides to change his approach to work? No. Are employers really that nitpicky about the word and its exact meaning? Probably not, but if your usage of a word doesn’t click immediately, someone who has mere seconds to look at your resume will just gloss over it and you will have lost an opportunity to make an imprint in their mind.

Unless you have an extensive amount of work experience full of career moves and advances, your resume usually will be limited to 1 page. Cramming your entire personality and life experience onto a single page is difficult and every word is precious. Losing the chance to shine because of a poorly used word in an unfortunate opportunity cost.

How to Use it Properly

Like any overt claim you make about yourself on your resume, it is important to back it up and provide context. If the executive summary of your resume refers to you as a ‘dynamic go-getter’ and never goes back to explain why later, the word is lost and has no meaning. Assuming you absolutely must use the word, talk about how dynamic your ideas were on a project.

Still, ‘dynamic’ is simply an overly vague word. If you mean that you are a flexible person, use ‘flexible’. If you mean energetic, just use ‘energetic’. The person reading your resume is probably a person (or sometimes a computer, but that’s just another reason to keep it simple) who doesn’t use flowery vocabulary themselves in real life. The easier you make it for them to get through your entire resume quickly, the more likely they are to get the impression you originally intended from your application.

Take Away

‘Dynamic’ is an odd word that doesn’t usually describe a person clearly without direct examples. Even with a lot of context, it can usually be replaced with a much more simple and straightforward term. Just Keep It Simple, Silly!

Do you have a resume cliche you’d like to see addressed in this series? Leave a comment below with your word and the Accredibles will decode your cliche as quickly as possible!

Definition: Merriam-Webster Dictionary

How to Use it Incorrectly

Ever since we learned what a resume was and its importance in the job search, we have been taught to toot our own horns. Obviously, displaying how awesome you are is essential to getting a hiring manager to look twice – but being obvious about it can actually be off-putting, believe it or not. Your goal should be to make your horn so attractive that people are drawn to it without requiring obnoxious pleas for attention.

The art of ‘humble self promotion’ is difficult to grasp because it is done differently for each person, but taking out the ‘humble’ can make you sound like a bad salesman – and that will put off anyone who is looking at your resume.

How to Use it Properly

Going on and on about how motivated you are as a professional doesn’t actually say anything about you without some solid context demonstrating why you think you are a motivated person. If you want to show that you are motivated, a quick description of a time when you overcame several challenges to get something done on time could be very helpful.

Another way to show you are motivated is to say why instead of how. Giving examples of instances when you have shown motivation can take up valuable space on your resume. Instead, you could demonstrate why you are motivated. Maybe you have a career goal you are trying to reach or believe strongly in the social mission of the company you are working for. These things can help to not only eliminate annoying buzzwords, but also humanize you out of a pile of robot resumes.

Asking someone to vouch for you is also a great way to show off your horn without tooting it. Someone else has nothing to gain by praising you. So when your former supervisor takes the time to write a great LinkedIn recommendation about how dedicated and motivated you were to accomplishing your goals, a future hiring manager is bound to take it seriously.

Take Away

Saying that you are motivated tells an employer or potential mentor nothing of substance and makes you sound robotic. Solution: You must prove it with an example, reason, or recommendation. These things will help your work speak for itself and you won’t need cliched buzzwords that people glaze over anyway.

Do you have a resume cliche you’d like to see addressed in this series? Leave a comment below with your word and the Accredibles will decode your cliche as quickly as possible!

Definition: Merriam-Webster Dictionary

How to Use it Incorrectly

If there were beauty pageants for buzzwords, ‘innovation’ would be the declining star whose career took a lethal hit because of overexposure. Innovation is the introduction of a new idea or method, which requires creativity. So saying that you are, “an innovative, results oriented, go-getter” (which is pretty much what everyone says on their resumes, cover letters, and online profiles) is a fantastic way to ensure that whomever is reading about you will have glazed-over eyes within five seconds.

As a rule of thumb, glazed-over eyes generally mean your document is about to get trashed. An extremely shocked expression will also achieve the same ends. An obscene action in the middle of the street to get attention for your school play is not innovative – it is obnoxious. Try to play it off as innovation to someone conservative or older, and you’ll be bringing on the shock factor.

How to Use it Properly

Three words: Back. It. Up.

The reason “innovative, results oriented, go-getter” sounds silly is because it is difficult to simply take a candidate’s word for it that these terms describe them. If it is important that your potential employer know that you are innovative, be sure to refer to actions or activities you have been a part of that required you to be innovative and the results of said innovation.

If you are throwing in buzzwords for the sake of resume or cover letter computer scanners, you know they don’t belong. Keep in mind that after the computer decides you have enough buzzwords, a real person will also read your documents. So if it just looks like buzzword bogus, you still won’t get that interview!

Take Away

If you are going to claim that you are innovative, you should show it with your use of the word and design and format of your application. Being boring and formulaic contradicts your claim and makes your other claims questionable as well. Solution: Be creative and provide proof for every claim you make!

Sophomore year was the worst year of my life in high school – I bit off more than I could chew and ended up in too many advanced classes with too few hours. Before that year, I was so well organized that getting behind on my work was unheard of. I would get all my work done immediately, and then proceed to nag my friends to do the same. Why? Because I had a great track record of success and was absolutely confident that I would do well on all my assignments.

Then during the Sophomore Year of Hades (SYH), getting my homework done or studying for a test took a lot longer because of all the extra material, and my confidence began to waver. I became scared of not doing well in school, and so the immediate retaliation was to avoid it. It was a whole lot easier to play a video game, watch a movie, or go shopping that it was to buckle down and face my new-found fear.

Fear – that was what pushed me toward procrastination. I wasn’t that I couldn’t handle the SYH or my classes, it was just that I didn’t want to think about what would happen if I couldn’t. This fear is the root cause of all procrastination, in fact. Is your friend’s fiance procrastinating with wedding planning? I bet you his ring he’s getting cold feet. Are you putting off starting on those MOOCs you want to finish before your new big project at work? You’re probably afraid you won’t get them done in time anyway.

No matter how organized or motivated you are, you have probably procrastinated at some point in your life. Its just a whole lot easier to binge on a new Netflix series than take notes on the week’s MOOC modules. Wanting to do something that’s immediately more fun and interesting is natural, so why not use that nature to your advantage? Try these 3 things to turn your work into fun and avoid procrastination.

1. Set deadlines and reward yourself when you meet them.

Gamification of boring stuff, anyone? Every time you finish one of those annoying-but-necessary worksheets, treat yourself to some ice cream. Or a T.V. break. Or anything else you like.

2. Come up with creative study/work tactics.

My little sister loves Quizlet – whenever she needs to memorize a lot of stuff fast, she puts everything into a Quizlet deck and races a friend to see who can get the most right. She gets to hang out with her friends and study productively at the same time. (Pssst…Quizlet is a fantastic tool!)

3. Track Your Efforts.

Finishing a task is great, but being able to look back and see how well your hard work paid off is a whole lot better. Keeping a journal or calendar to look back at also gives you a template for future projects, which will increase you confidence and therefore decrease procrastination.

So the solution is to work backwards. Procrastination comes from fear. The goal is then to figure out where the fear is coming from and nip it at its bud. In the meantime, just make the work fun and it will just keep getting itself done!

The job market may not be at a point yet where MOOCs are accepted by employers on par with traditional college courses. Regardless, MOOCs on your resume show that you are willing to take initiative to increase your knowledge base and skills. Many recruiters see this quality as an opportunity to hire employees who will continue to improve themselves, which will constantly increase the human capital they provide to the company.

It is extremely important that you are showcasing your MOOCs appropriately on your resume, however. A disorganized list of your classes will look more unprofessional and illegitimate than your resume would be without the MOOCs on it at all. Instead, try placing them methodically and within categories.

Divide and Conquer

Again, your MOOCs will not be seen the same way as a college education by employers, so don’t bother listing them that way. You want to make sure your online classes are being seen as a positive supplement to your application, and not a glorified accessory.

Instead, MOOCs should be under a separate heading in your resume’s Education section called ‘Continuing Education’. This simply refers to all of your important efforts to improve yourself as an employee and can include any certificates or diplomas you earned (instead of or after college) along with any MOOCs you have taken.

Skills, Not Frills

Categorizing by skills is an easy way to organize your MOOCs effectively. Not only does it make scanning a resume easier, but it also immediately displays the benefit of taking a certain group of courses: The development of a specific skill that will be valuable to the company.

These categories also mean that you don’t need a detailed description of each course. Usually, the course name itself provides a glimpse into the course content. Listing the skill the course helped you develop is yet another way to state the purpose of the class without a fluffy description. Cardinal rule: save the details for your interview, keep your resume simple.

Quality Over Quantity

You don’t need to list every MOOC you have ever signed up for, or even every MOOC you have completed (but never list one that you didn’t complete!). If you are applying for a marketing position, for example, the hiring manager will probably be less interested in your Intro to Physics class and more in your Creativity & Innovation class. A list of classes longer than your ‘Experience’ section is unattractive and unnecessary. Keep it simple, clear, and useful.

Many MOOCs are hard work and teach you a lot – there is no reason you shouldn’t receive due credit for them. They show your versatility, desire to improve, and ability to multi-task and can be a great asset in the job search process.

Bonus Tip: Make sure you can prove everything on your resume; build a portfolio! If you have notes, assignments, and projects from your MOOCs saved on your Accredible profile, the only thing you need to prove your involvement in the class is a link!